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Friday, March 4, 2011

This is incredibly sad. The thought of not having pictures during the births of my children is unthinkable. It's like saying I couldn't have pictures taken during my wedding. You can't redo it, or capture those precious first moments another time. Birth is so powerful and life changing, every woman should be allowed to have it captured on film and relive it forever. Below is the article from the New York Times.

CASCADE, Md. — When Laurie Shifler was expecting her eighth child, she was so upset about a local hospital’s new policy restricting photographs of births that she started an online petition. Hundreds of people, near and far, signed it, many expressing outrage that a hospital would prevent parents from recording such a momentous occasion, one that could never be recaptured.

The hospital, Meritus Medical Center, in nearby Hagerstown, bars all pictures and videos during birth — cellphones must be turned off — and allows picture-taking only after the baby has been delivered safely and the medical team has given permission.“It’s about our rights,” Ms. Shifler, 36, said the other day at her home here in rural Maryland as she cradled her newborn daughter, Kaelii, in her arms and the rest of her brood roughhoused around her. Her husband, Michael, 37, a police officer, was able to take pictures 30 seconds after Kaelii’s birth last month, but Ms. Shifler is still fighting the hospital to change its policy.“It’s my child,” she said. “Who can tell me I can take a picture or not take a picture of my own flesh and blood?”